A few days ago, with a solemn ceremony a part of the peak of the Cerro Armazones, a mountain in the Chile’s Cordillera of Costa, was blown up. At a height of about 3,000 meters (about 10,000 feet), the summit will be further modified to make room for E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope), ESO’s optical and infrared telescope.

The ceremony marked the beginning of a very long job because E-ELT is expected to enter into operation in 2024. It will be the largest optical and infrared telescope in the world and for that reason the ceremony was attended by representatives of the Chilean Government and the ESO member states. The order to proceed to the explosion was given by Chile’s Vice Minister of National Assets Jorge Maldonado.

The explosion demolished about 5,000 cubic meters of rock but this is only the beginning of the work that will led to the removal of approximately 220,000 cubic meters of rock and earth to obtain a 100 to 300 meters area where to build E-ELT. In short, the peak of the mountain will be heavily modified to make room for the observatory.

E-ELT will be really huge with its primary mirror by almost 39.3 m (128 feet) in diameter. The choice of the Cerro Armazones summit is due to the climate of the area, very dry and therefore particularly suitable for optical astronomy, also thanks to its altitude. It’s no coincidence that in Chile there are several observatories, thanks to the presence of the mountains with an arid climate.

E-ELT has ambitious goals. It will allow to observe unexplored regions of the cosmos, to examine the initial stages of the formation of planetary systems, to discover the presence of water and organic molecules in proto-planetary disks and examine the atmosphere of exoplanets.

A set of instruments will allow E-ELT to obtain images of the objectives observed and especially to make spectrographic analysis of various types. The aim is to obtain observations with more details than the Hubble Space Telescope, a truly remarkable accomplishment for a ground telescope, which even at high altitude has the disturbance of the atmosphere.

A telescope such as E-ELT will surely bring progress in the field of astronomy and as always happens in these cases its construction will bring technological advances. The work has just begun and already it’s defined the world’s biggest eye on the sky.

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